We Need To Rethink School
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- čas přidán 6. 07. 2024
- Our current way of schooling isn't working. Due to its history, the education system carries persistent problems to the present day. Let's look at some solutions to revolutionise our approach to education for a liberated future.
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Solarpunk Alana's Video on Education & Ecology: • Why Education for Natu...
Introduction - 0:00
Preface - 1:17
History of Schooling - 1:57
Critique of Schooling - 8:13
History of Anarchist Alternatives - 17:49
Mapping Alternatives to Schooling - 24:42
Conclusion - 32:17
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/ saintdrew
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outro music: Cedar Womb by joe zempel
CZcams: / @joezempel
Spotify: open.spotify.com/artist/3vVDn...
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Sources & Resources:
The Emergence of Compulsory Schooling and Anarchist Resistance by Matt Hern
Toward the Destruction of Schooling by Jan D Matthews
Standardizing Human Ability by Cathy Davidson
The Social Importance of the Modern School by Emma Goldman
Anarchism: The Feminist Connection by Peggy Kornegger
Childhood & The Psychological Dimension of Revolution by Ashanti Alston
Schooling in Capitalist America by Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis
Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses by Louis Althusser
Anarchist Pedagogies by Robert H. Haworth
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich
The Desktop Regulatory State by Kevin Carson
The Origin and Ideals of the Modern School by Francisco Ferrer
Anarchy, A Graphic Guide by Clifford Harper
Anarchic Epimetheanism: The pedagogy of Ivan Illich by Richard Kahn
Great video, and thank you for collaborating with me! The education system definitely needs an entire rehaul, from both a social and ecological perspective.
Really enjoyed your video about rewilding education, keep up the good work!
What if there was an organizational platform that could allow co-operative communities to build new schools, under a new model, but also build everything else we need, like local food, healthcare, clean energy and other goods and services through a non-profit worker co-operative network of cooperation, collaboration and co-ownership? What if that already exists and we could join freely and start building the new model while the out-dated capitalist model is collapsing around us? One Small Town provides that platform. Worth a look. Nothing to lose by looking into it and everything to gain from getting involved.
I watched a video about someone being against universal basic income. He argued that without a job, people lack meaning in their lives, and they become lazy. But what is stopping someone on universal basic income using their free time and money to take the initiative and educate themselves, learn a new skill, and find their own meaning of life? Society assumes that people need to be wage slaves to derive meaning in their lives.
Terrifying insight into how people may think that they must be assigned self purpose for it to exist
And create art, music, craft, literature, philosophy and gardens and other things that enrich society but don't currently allow most to make a living.
@@Lucifersfursona Assigned self-purpose. A wet dream of an authoritarian and capitalist mind.
Terrifying.
In truth, a good job can provide a positive purpose but it doesn't HAVE to be the only purpose in our lives. In addition to or, in place of, some kind of a job ,if people have basic survival money they could certainly apply themselves in many other positive ways as well. People should have the option.
That's my core belief that everyone should have the option to choose for themselves, in just about anything.
I bet that person agrees on modern slavery 😂 Money isn't everything. THAT'S THE POINT OF UBI!
meanwhile, parents are unschooling and neglecting their kid's education for all the wrong reasons.
“The American school model is broken!”
“Yeah! Why do you think so?”
“School not culty enough. Not enough death and shame. Children are being treated like they’re human and I find that disgusting. One time my kid asked me why god built us physical bodies if he despises everything they are and do so much now we won’t get raptured”
“No-“
Unfortunately. This is why any proper change in education will have to come from a cooperative and radical movement made up of diverse segments of society waving the banner of critical pedagogy and social justice, not isolated pockets of parents.
Worse are the ones wanting to warp the school by using the children as an excuse. Sometimes they'll be at the board meetings of schools they don't even HAVE children attending. It's become yet another "culture war" front for certain groups that tell themselves what is currently taught is too left-leaning (like Critical Race Theory) and so to "win" on that front, they have to fill schools with right-leaning concepts to indoctrinate children that until now had a place out of reach from their right-wing parents' influence.
It is essential to distinguish Illich’s deschooling from TikTok/Insta/CZcams’s unschooling. It is imperative to recognize that in any circumstance where a radical alternative is proposed, there are always going to be those who take the most vulgar understanding of it and appropriate those aspects which would be most appealing to a mass of people thereby generating personal capital; be that social or economic. Thus we get the ignoramicisation of deschooling by thirsty idiots into unschooling practiced by crunchy slobs.
@@Andrewism I agree. I'm working on a co-operative model of new schooling, 21st Century skills, critical thinking, hands-on ecology learning and small class sizes to allow for better teacher-student relationships of learning, self-expression and growth. It is loosely based off a 'Mini U' summer camp set up that I've worked with in the past. Freedom of choice for parents and students for a variety of courses, taught by experts that don't necessarily have to be formal teachers, but they could be and then have the freedom to bring in experienced guest teachers, or better yet, just have the flexibility to bring the whole class to the site where the expert teacher(s) are and get some hands-on learning. That is my passion project to go with a new cooperative community network platform that can uplift communities and provide mutual aid and prosperity for everybody in the area, especially those who choose to contribute.
Nothing is sadder than convincing kids that their worth is measured by a number and grading. Me and so many other people at every point and walk of life, broke when we could never meet arbitrary expectations. And if you fall under a line or out of the mold, you are not worth the effort.
Couldn't agree more, and like everything in school it limits our thinking for the rest of our lives, unless we unlearn it. It teaches us to compete with others for money and status symbols instead of making our lives and our communities better. Our self-worth depends on believing we're better than others in the ways we're taught to value like money and hard work and how green our grass is.
My personal experience exactly. Doesn't help my parents come from a culture that (over)emphasizes education as the foundation to having a life to the point I almost... quit. I don't mean just dropping out either.
This. I had undiagnosed learning disabilities till 20 and didn’t know I was neurodivergent till 16-17. I have school-related-PTSD because of the normalized ableism and shame. I remember being told “If you don’t go to college and get a job, you will die homeless and alone.” And how anyone thinks it’s okay to tell children that every day since they are under 10 is a monster or saying what they heard from one.
TW small trauma dump:
School for me was so bad, being shamed for my slow reading and not doing math exactly right (despite teachers never giving any context to the information or being able to explain it in another way).
I got bullied by teachers and kids alike for years in elementary school, had lots of mental health issues and struggles with middle school due to transition and trauma alike, forced onto medication I did not want via coercion after my accommodations were not followed and I “needed it to do well” in high school, and so much more. Including more bullying for teachers. I can’t even remember it all. I remember the few kind teachers I ran into. The few kind souls, and without them I definitely would have run away from home or tried to end my life due to schooling and the fights it caused at home. (Which is much better now especially with family therapy, my own therapy, and my parents understanding my brain more.)
This system is traumatizing and needs to end before more kids end their lives.
“We get so used to other people telling us what to do, that we can’t imagine a world without someone ruling us”
preach brother this is the shit 👊💪 the sooner we take responsibility for our lives and stop relying on other people to lead us through life, the quicker we can find our own sense of purpose and value
I'd point this on religion too.
But who needs gods to fill the gaps when we already see it in human flesh?
That’s a world with pedophiles running around
Exactly
Korean school survivor here. I used to go to school by 8am and comeback home on 11pm every weekdays. I took breaks in every weekends in guilt in that everyone else was likely toiling away with studying and I was "exceptionally lazy" for even daring to do so since that was the society's standards. Those few numeric values I received every month were objective measurement of my worth and I constantly struggled to get those up even at least a few points, actually thinking that it would make me better than anyone else. The thing with competition is that not only it devalues you but everyone around you as well. Since there would be many others that are worse off and schools and society have decided that means they worth less as human beings
Recently couple more news broke out about the schools here recently. One was about a student attacking a teacher with a knife. And the other about a male high school student hurting a female classmate on the face and throwing himself off from 9th floor of an apartment. Hearing both made it alive should have relieved me but it has only made it worse for me since I can already imagine the physical and emotional damage they could have received and the aftermath they would face. The comments were all about how teachers need more authority and use more cruel punishments and how those kids daring to oppose such authorities cannot be forgiven. Also that the cause in all of this is "how their parents have not given them proper family education" which I believe it is the generic equivalent to more parent authority and mandating obedience.
That is a really tragic experience and I'm sorry to hear that you and others have gone and are going through that. Globally, the education systems need to change, and I think the Korean example impresses just how urgent that need for change is.
That sounds horrific wtf
That sounds terrible, meanwhile we have dumm republicans begging for this system without even understanding what it entails
Schools in Asia are the worst
Americans are no where near this level of education, discipline, habits or levels of competence within American school systems.
American children are far behind those of other countries. American children need to be told not to physically attack or harm or be mass -illers.
In elementary school I was punished for saying that it seems we were being schooled how to be taught, not how to learn. The thought came from the reference librarian who helped me with books on how to develop better study habits, introducing me to the word 'autodidact'.
Many white children left our school, and told me they were learning higher-order thinking skills. I was told we couldn't be taught that by our Black teacher, and I was punished for asking that too. I was diagnosed autistic, which to this I'm told is a made up thing for whites.
As a child, it meant I was lacking intelligence, so my teacher were obsessed with proving my high grade ere from cheating. That is still a common assumption of black autistic children, while white children with autism are seen as an evolutionary leap forwards. Neither of the assumptions are true, and are inherently destructive.
I eventually transferred into Ohio's first free school project, which outraged my father, but my he did nothing to stop it. Black children told me their parents said I was being taught to be a socialist who is against god, racist, and anti-Black. They mistakenly believed Nazism, socialism, communism were all vaguely the same and evil.
I'm 67, live in Berkeley, CA, but here and everywhere, I travel in the US, I still find this disinformation regurgitated as fact be people regardless of their degree of "education".
Thank you for sharing your experience. It's terrible how Black autistic children are treated then and now.
@@Andrewism Please consider making a video about Immigration** since anti-immigration/anti-refugee rhetoric is sweeping the Global North in particular Western Europe with the rise of far-right political parties like the AFD in Germany and National Rally in France. And of course in the USA too this is happening with Trump and the Republicans.............
The educational process needs to be enjoyable because currently that is not the case especially for boys .
I'm very excited to check this video out. I'm a public school teacher, and I've been thinking a lot about this topic for the last few years. I've also been looking into the Anarchist Pedagogies Collective, the Human Restoration Project, and a lot of literature on the topic of free schooling etc. I even presented last year about all the changes I've been trying to implement in my own classroom.
I'm trying my best, but there are so many barriers for an individual teacher. I hope we can work together and move forward towards crafting something better.
I am just a random stranger out of 8 billion, but I perhaps among those who are awaken to the dystopia being perpetrated for centuries.
Please, comrade, do not give up.
As a school teacher myself this is a much needed video and I definitely appreciate to. Also I plan on working on a framework for Black Liberatory Education that aims to build a community to education pipeline that is cyclical in its function as the negation to the school to prison pipeline.
Sorely needed!
@@Andrewism I just have no idea when I’m going to be able to work on it but it is a priority for me nevertheless.
@@BlackAnarchist1992 If you're doing that here in the U.S, keep the right-wing "culture warriors" very much in mind. They're hateful enough of manufactured boogeymen like CRT, that had a limited scope, so they would really go after anyone trying to do what you're planning.
These perspectives would be covered in an intro-level course while getting your Master’s. Not to say that you aren’t doing noble work, but you aren’t the first to consider such thoughts and their ramifications, as well as considering how schools fit into the context of simply leading students to yet another higher, still oppressive rung on the ladder. Freire stated best that for the oppressed, to be [human] is oppressor. Peace love and happiness, but I implore you to explore your brave ideas amidst a backdrop of fascinating research by activists who are doing the brunt work to build upon their findings - not feeling like you are alone in your fight.
@@liamneels8197 While I do appreciate your comment there isn’t a specific focus on black communities within the context of America in general which is why I call the idea a plan for Black Liberatory Education.
I remember having a deep love for learning as I wanted to be a scholar growing up. I would really become focused on my studies but by the time I was in high school and moved, I notice a seriously deep hatred for learning in everything except a few people. I felt other'd for spending my time at the library and despite my good grades I was treated like a potential problem by teachers and staff who generally saw all students as obstacles or even potential criminals. I remember being told to "shut up" while asking a question in class and the teacher didn't back me up, he just kept going. That was a reality learning experience for me and while I'm glad I know see the world of education for what it is in my country, I don't want any kid to experience what I went through.
I relate. I've found relearning a love of learning isn't so easy, especially when in many ways (from my experience as of yet) college perpetuates the same twisted version of "learning" that grade school does.
@@joshuaramirez9088 yup
I recently found my joy of learning after removing the boredom and trauma mixed in from schooling. To hell with a system that chooses to traumatize young children.
How did you do it?
I came upon this during my universities Palestinian solidarity encampment has been under threat from well basically all levels of state and school authorities.
It made me realize I think for the first time, how the structure of the university system itself, especially here in canada, is an active and often violent arm of the state. In many shocking and horrific ways that probably shouldn’t be typed out in a CZcams comment.
Anyone who steps out of line is on the line. And if they are Indigenous or Black particularly, they may be in physical danger.
I kinda “knew” this. But it never really all came together for me without the context of the Taylorist construction, and state propagation.
My father is a public school teacher and has been for over 30 years now, and he is a great teacher, one that has definitely taken many approaches described here, not because he’s an Anarchist, but because he always genuinely cared about his students and wanted them to learn together, and at most of the schools he’s taught at. He’s been able to change a small group of other teachers to take some more student student approaches and trying to reduce quantification of worth through grades. Sadly at public schools grades are required. So that can’t happen anymore. But at the old private school. He just gave basically everyone an A and it was more based on like how much they grew rather than like how many out of 10 they got correct on a test.
'Incapable of thinking clearly' really hits. So much rote learning, so little opportunity for creativity, exploration and engagement to develop the ability to reason, problem solve, research and think through ideas and their implications.
Being a teacher myself, I was reluctant to watch this video. There's so much that happens behind the scenes of modern (in my case, American) education systems that makes it difficult for even students to judge, despite them growing up in that same system. However, you brought up some good points I wish to discuss.
Again, I have a limited viewpoint of education. I've only ever taught in the US, specifically in NC and VT, but let's continue.
1. Students nowadays are constantly questioning a teacher's knowledge. They don't wish to blindly follow. Social media, while being immeasurably frustrating to deal with in the classroom, has given students a different point of view. Not that I ever expected students to blindly trust me, but it's definitely given students a voice they wouldn't have otherwise had.
2. You state that our modern education system, while desiring genuine outcomes, has basically become a method to churn out as many young and mindless working people possible. This is 100% correct, and causes so many teachers constant frustration to this day. We're told in university that our job is to educate, but we're constantly bombarded by the priorities of... other things from other people [who aren't students]. (I'm withdrawing a lot of my personal opinions here. I just don't want you to think that us teachers are also mindlessly following what we've been taught. We know the system is broken, but we can't realistically do anything about it.)
3. The core structure remains unchanged because there is less and less education funding to make those changes, and less and less support for educating students as a whole. Teachers know how people best learn, and we're well informed of modern educational methods. However we are constantly being told there's not enough to support students in that way. At the end of the day, we can only do so much, else it'll encompass our entire livelihood.
I don't mean to end the comments here. Like I said, you brought up good points that need to be addressed. However it's brought some unexpected anxiety. Hopefully I'll continue tomorrow. I just want you to know that this teacher hears you and also desires significant change, and I do my best to encourage that every year.
It probably doesn't help that in the U.S, you have a large portion of conservatives fearful that higher education will turn their child into a "college-educated elitist liberal", because they're told by propagandist culture warriors that those institutions have been "infiltrated" by the "radical left". Not to mention that is part of the decades-old fear of demographics diminishing conservative influence as the country becomes more minority-majority and more educated. So the two fears combined means conservatives with control of state governments have done everything they can to keep kids as under-educated and indoctrinated as possible.
You’re second point reminds me the concept of Hypernormalization discussed by BBC documentarian Adam Curtis. People in the Soviet Union knew that the system was broken and that their leaders were incompetent, but they couldn’t muster an alternative vision.
How much is funding an issue? I often hear things like the US spends more on K-12 education that other developed countries. A quick google search says 18k is spent on the average public school student.
What is not being said with statements like that and how come other countries can spend less but get better outcomes?
Our goal as teachers is to share with students the importance of questioning authority. Why SHOULD they trust you? What perspectives do you teach? Whose perspectives DONT you teach? Share with them. There is a difference between being honest in your journey, everyone’s journey, to be more educated and being ignorant due to discomfort. If students cannot learn how to question the very viewpoints we posit, then we have failed them.
Dear lord Andrew, you have no idea how much this video is a gift from the heavens for me. I'm currently at the tail end of my second semester (2nd year) of university and continuously through the experience I've been wrought with the thoughts that the school system is a horrendous experience if you aren't the "ideal student". Expected to sacrifice everything to win the system and be the perfect little pawn. I just can't do that, my focus on studying courses I don't find interesting is miniscule, I'm terrible at memorizing when I need to and I'm not exactly the best at managing my time. All these factors keep making me think that I'm not worth anything until I have to remind myself that the grades are just a measurement for the juiciness I would bring to whatever Upper Management suit decides to pluck me like an apple.
As I speak now I've got an exam tomorrow which I understand from a fundamental level the topics and discussions had in class, but if I'm not able to recall the answers to hyperspecific scenarios with the terms and wording my lecturers deem as "right" then I'm no different from someone who doesn't even know anything at all.
Francisco's Modern school sounds like a damn dream to me, I love to learn things I can apply, but when I'm being judged by some hierarchal standard, I just can't function. It drains my soul and kills whatever interest I have. It just goes from wonder to trying to maximize arbitrary points
Wow you're so eloquent. It's sad to think you're being so poorly served by your higher education. it shouldn't be this way.
We desperately need alternative possibilities.
Andrew made this video just after the horrible entrance exam kids are forced to take here in Trinidad to place them in secondary school results came out. Great timing.
Horrible, horrible system
I would have loved a school like this in k-12. This system trains us to serve those who have “more” than we do. It’s never served people like me. Even in the expensive schools they will find a way to gatekeep and bully you into servitude.
So happy to see this come out now! I just got out of a ROUGH year of teaching, and have just been gearing up for some research and rethinking about what I can do going forward. I have to teach to put food on the table, but where I can, I enjoy teaching in ways that encourage students to think for themselves and challenge existing notions.
Ever since I fell for the okey doke of rich kid school (both sending my first born to one and working there) I've been feeling this. Rich kid school is a whole mind f and everyone is rushing to catch up to Japan and S. Korea where kids are literally killing themselves?!?! MIMS😵💫
Really shows that the most prominent cause of death for teenagers in S.Korea is suicide.
Now it is labeled as suicide officially, but a professor I'm listening to said this is more like mass societal homicide.
Which is weird, since so many Asian families then send those kids who did survive and get high grades over to U.S colleges/universities. (especially China, that seems to want to become the U.S except without American culture or democracy)
I've undergone every form of education save for private school. Yes, even unschooling for a year. I'm the eldest and therefore experimental child after all. And from all that, I learned one thing:
The best way to learn is to just teach yourself. 💀
We should have democratic education with service learning, experience learning, and learning by doing in some cases (e.g. food preparation and community gardening), student centered learning, child integration (no age segregation), self regulated learning, competency based learning, and no grading or homework. Education would include formal learning, informal learning, and non-formal learning.
Assessment would be more qualitative and less quantitative, more formative and less summative, more criterion-referenced and less norm-referenced, and, in some cases, ipsative. Operant conditioning, classical conditioning, and gamification would also be used far more beneficially when used.
Students would participate in the management and maintenance of their school and use natural resting positions rather than sitting in a chair or on a ball unless unable to do so. They would learn with context, understanding, and orientation. Food would be healthy, and dining rooms and kitchens would be part of local regenerative food systems. Education would mostly be cooperative, but be competitive to an extent in some cases like with sports.
The curriculum would be socially oriented and structured like an outline of academic disciplines. Although, in the case of service learning, experience learning, and learning by doing, that wouldn't always be the case (e.g. plunging a toilet and cleaning the school).
Students would learn some knowledge at places like repair cafes, during the management and maintenance of their school, possibly through the manuals, and by helping with local regenerative agriculture and homemaking. For people who are interested in doing so, some knowledge, such as music, could be learned at leisure centers or other places.
Honestly you hit the nail on the head completely.
That's not really a school at that point. What you've said kinda turns an entire town into a school. (also good luck leaving the school's IT maintenance in the hands of students unless thinking about that more in the context of how mentorships work)
That sounds amazing. I would also add extensive mentorship programs, community based teaching and teaching of classical education (especially trivium) to the philosophically inclined students.
@@Vaeldarg Yeah cause the school is being integrated more to the community
@@Vaeldarg Students wouldn't do things they're not competent at or lack the responsibility for. It would be similar to kids cleaning their schools in Japan. Adults would still be involved, and mentorship would also be important. There just wouldn't be an ageist view of competency and responsibility. And both kids and adults would be involved in meetings and things like voting as needed.
I agree. I wanted a good resource on anarchist schools, you uploaded at the perfect time. It's surprising and sad that lot of leftists think current schooling system has no problems when late 1800s and early 1900s anarchists were way more radical on this topic
Heck yeah! More talking about education! There is so much important work and imagining to be done about how education can work better for people.
I read the book "The English Teacher" by R.K.Narayan and it depicted a professor exhaused with the teachings of literature studies in his school. To directly quote one of his lines,"..This education had reduced us to a nation of morons ;we were strangers to our own culture and camp followers of another culture feeding on leavings and garbage"
Though this wasn't the fullest sentiment it was a reflection of the backwardness he considered current teaching techniques to be and how it can be evolved .Throughout be book the teacher moans and groans over even going to teach his students and it reminded me of how disillusioned teachers always seemed to be for me.This video really expanded on my beliefs that schools are only meant for indoctrination ,meant to be a cog to a machine and my teachers hated it.I was often corporal punished for not doing assignments or showing a general disinterest to school as a whole. I only studied subjects that intrigued me and abandoned the studies of other subjects.I'm glad to know that people have fought for the "decapitalisation" of education.I can only hope to encourage and even foster such changes within my community.
Algebra teacher from WV, USA here! Awesome video, Paolo Freire has really inspired the way I view my profession. I used to be a wind turbine engineer, but I now truly believe that a liberated education is the core solution to all crises we face. Thank you for the reminder that while doing what I can within the system is good, I need to do concurrent work outside the system too.
“The role of teachers, those obscure soldiers of civilization, is to give to the masses the intellectual means of revolt.” - Louise Michel
As an educator, I want and try so badly to have these ideas implemented in how I operate within the institution of traditional general education. Thank you for sharing this!
From one teacher to another I would suggest the book Lessons In Liberation An Abolitionist Toolkit For Educators by Education For Liberation Network & Critical Resistance Editorial Collective.
@BlackAnarchist1992 thank you
@@dastardly_dahlia No Problem
a question:
do you mean just in teaching method?
or would you gut the entire curriculum?
my teachers taught the curriculum and additionally invoked skepticism, curiosity to explore ideas, accepted challenge.... i totally accept that i just had awesome teachers.
but could you ( as a teacher) expand on if you would keep the curriculum and work in thee less hierarchical methods? or ... what exactly.
i just don't have the perspective from how this works in reality.
@@Andre-qo5ek Good question and in my case in particular the best I could do is adjust my teaching method given that the curriculum is nonnegotiable. Also my classroom structure would change to negate hierarchy as much as possible.
I would love it if anarchist efforts could think big. What would it take to eventually build your own schools? Provide your own food? Housing? Security?
Taking over capitalism isn't enough. We have to build durable institutions we can pass on to our children.
Prefigurative Politics
@@Andrewism Most anarchists aren't comfortable with the idea of wielding power, even as a community.
@LongDefiant And thats why yall will always fail, god save us
School never taught me anything except how to be a good slave to the system.
⛓️
Well said
Bro, your channel is so good. I have learned so much about socialism, anarchism, and leftism in general and it has really help me understand why I believe what I believe so much better. Keep up the good work seriously!
Glad to hear it, thank you!
i’m bajan and i just finished my last year of secondary school this year. i was the president of my school’s students council and i tried to get my school heavily involved in the government’s “education transformation” initiative. we all wanted change in the system but the changes they proposed were just to overhaul our system and create and new one to mirror the american system without addressing specific needs of our people and criticisms and accomplishments of the current system and the people within it. it was difficult to get our ideas through to them for many reasons; adults didn’t want to listen to what we would say, we are the top school so ofc everyone thought we’d oppose the changes that could level the playing field and a whole lot of other preconceptions and barriers to communication externally and internally. i could go on for hours about this topic because it is so dear to me even if i have finished secondary school and plan to pursue tertiary education overseas (idk yet though because cxc is taking real long with these CAPE results) and i’m so glad to see one of my fav youtubers and caribbean comrade talk about it.
sending love from barbados ❤🇧🇧
Sending love right back from T&T 🇹🇹 It's unfortunately common in the Caribbean that the youth's ideas for transformation are ignored. Hopefully you all can find another way to see those changes made
As someone home educated for a while, before going back to schooling for 6th form in the UK. I hate the education system it's so strangling.
As a former substitute teacher, this is one huge problem I have with education as a whole, the panopticon for surveilling students is now digital as well as in the real world.
In addition to the behavior issues that spring from some kids not being able to do 7-12 hour days (a lot of kids have after school programs until 5 or 6 and have to wake up at 5 or 6 when parents go to work), it just leads to an environment that is stressful, exhausting for them, and not conducive to learning or becoming a self teaching student that pursues knowledge for knowledge's sake.
I love your videos criticizing education systems so much.
I'm getting annoyed with the way in reaction to right wing attacks on public education, liberals and leftists both have been getting into the habit of glorifying the education system despite it's role in perpetuating capitalism and traumatizing most disabled kids at least who are put through it.
The Kamala joke was perfect 😭
I was kind of nervous about this video when I first saw the title, but this is well-researched and thoughtful, with real solutions from actual experts. I am getting my master’s in curriculum and instruction, and everything you talked about, we learned in our classes and discussed.
One topic I researched recently was adult education, aka andragogy. As the amount of needed knowledge grows, it’s something I think we need. We need to let everyone be able to learn at the pace they want to and are able to learn.
I’m about a year away from getting my teaching degree. I hope I can introduce some radical initiatives in my classroom like creative writing, basic ecology, astronomy and theater. I also want to integrate visits to parks, museums etc. into the overall education, as well as outside classrooms in fields and forests If that’s possible.
Overall, I’m pretty new to teaching, and I have still a lot of stuff to clear out and understand, and that video was perfect as another step in that process.
Man, you get my dreaming glands going ;) ... i just turned 30 but im still yearning for a productive and free learning experience with other people of all ages. All the instututions of learning that are yet available have always stifled me and my journey in life, even arts university. I sincerely hope something more along our lines becomes available in our lifetimes. Im down to working towards setting up such an environment if I find other likeminded and driven people...
I agree. I’m 31 and I’m tired of how institutions are shutting the door if you’re not in your teens/20s and/or rich. My parents have also encouraged me to do education; I can kinda see that for myself but I don’t want to do it under a traditional grading structure.
I’ve always loved the arts and want to get better at them. I know there are self-taught artists out there. But there are some people who need a supportive community or an extra helping hand to get to the other side. Experience and supportive communities are the greatest teachers.
Something you might be interested in Andrew is Ireland's preschool curriculum framework "Aistear", which I believe avoides the authoritarian relationship between teacher and student to focus on the child's agency and observing their periodic growth and interests. Our primary school curriculum was actually updated very recently, taking on board some of Aistears' framework. Aka, plagiarised it 😂
I know someone who was unschooled as a child, and as a result she can barely read and write, never mind higher order skills. We need a different approach to schooling than we currently have, but we also need to address the practical issues. How do we ensure that children being taught in alternative ways actually develop the skills they need?
SUDBURY VALLEY EDUCATION FOR THE WIN
new andrewism video yippee
As far as I'm concerned, any alternative model, so long as it is positive and life-affirming, of school, society, or life, is desperately needed now. Our societies are at a tipping point I believe and I truly hope we make the right decisions over these next 100 years.... If we good guys don't win out, I truly fear for the future of this planet. Whether one believes in an afterlife or not, shouldn't we strive to make life on this planet as positive and affirming for as many people as possible? I mean why not?? why strive for anything else BUT that? Why else are we here? You don't have to believe in religious thought to believe that we should strive to create a humane world versus an INhumane one. Isn't one more inherently right than the other????
I certainly think so.
I loved the ending where you explained because that always gets me. The guild idea imo is fantastic. I also think a increase in apprenticships is a big one.
You have incredible timing, and this for two reasons. The first, that I randomly thought to see if there was anything new on your channel one hour after this upload.
The second, that I've lately been fixated on the fact that the education system, for all its (evidently spurious) claims that it prepares one for life, fails to cover many everyday skills. It clicked back when I began trying to learn to cook that that's a skill I should have been taught in my teens.
Later, I caught word that in some countries, a subject used to exist named home economics that covered such things as cooking, housekeeping, finances, etc. But even that subject was part of the true, hierarchical purpose of the education system, as the goal was to mold women to patriarchal gender roles.
Thing is, I was thinking of setting off a campaign to get my country's education system to implement a modern version of home ec that isn't patriarchal and instead is built on the premise of "this is stuff _everyone_ should learn".
However, seeing this video makes me wonder if this really is the optimal approach to the issue. Whether trying to introduce courses providing actual life skills into a system not designed for it would be a doomed, "square peg, round hole" project. And how else the goal of "ensure people learn this necessary skillset they probably aren't learning" could be achieved instead.
I'll need to give it a lot of thought, but I was thinking something like organizing community workshops? ❤
Could maybe look into modeling those workshops off his video on expanding the concept of libraries. If it's something everyone should learn, the information needs to be as available as possible, as well as the skill's minimally-required tools for hands-on learning.
Bravo!
It's utter sadness how much real human potential has been, and continues to be, wasted...
I educate my child at home, I use Freire and Illich and bell hooks as my pedagogical models. She is thriving. Existence before essence. Scholé over school.
We should have created a K-12 National Recommended Reading List decades ago. Most people do not seem to discover what they are actually interested in by high school graduation.
The teachers expect students to be motivated by competing with each other. We got gold stars in early grammar school.
I started reading Science Fiction in 4th grade. That exposed me to information and ideas that were not being taught. So to what degree is school mind control?
I decided to go to college for engineering in 7th grade.
*Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics* by Stan Gibilisco
This reminded me of Shantiniketan, a school founded by Rabindranath Tagore, a poet, novelist and humanist. I live in the homeland of Tagore, yet all I've ever been taught about Shantiniketan is that he wanted to teach the students under the trees and not in classrooms (which taught British curriculum at the time).
Hardly any people know about how community and nature focused the original teachings of Tagore were at Shantiniketan.
There exists a system that works: agora. I'm 17 and I'm attending a new experimental school system where i don't have teachers or classes. Rather, i have mentors and projects. Instead of covering the corriculum by listening to how a teacher interperated it, i get to cover it by exploring ideas that peak my own curiosity. I can have a project about some random topic like gaming, there is a lot gaming can teach us about society, and how humans behave in groups. I personally have taken an interest in philosophy and have covered a lot of social science subjects by studying the work of people like peter sibger, kafka, and edgar allan poe. I also have friends who have had more sciency projects about aerodynamics, and i myself have studied mushrooms and potatoes. This became a bit ranty, but I would encourage to look agora up. It is a system that produces independent, critically thinking, lifelong learners, and research has shown that people graduating from this system have had more success in university than the average learner because of the research skills and independence we gain. Rant over.
sounds like Sego Lily school in Utah 🤔
I came from solar punk alana's video and the shift from British to a hard french accent was something, really cool collaboration on a very important topic
I still have so much unlearning to do coming out of the institution…Of course as always learning and relearning things along the way.
This video fulfills my key good content requirements of
- further clarifies the ways cannibalism of the electric soul both in self and superposition is really damn baked in there and the ways it manifests in creating authority, hatred of human life, and fixation on death
- confirming something I always felt but gave benefit of the doubt and could never articulate the feeling of
- both deep connection with my fellow humankind, and a deep connection to a superposition of horror and rage this has been done to us
- would be soooo gratifying to slap across the faces of mid-2010s HP fans who were whole cloth endorsing some if not all of Joanne Rogan’s Thatcherite ideologies
Video explains why college took away my ability to read at length and learning anarchism slowly over ~8 years brought it back. There is nothing more uplifting and empowering and hopeful, than realizing if you don’t know something, you can learn it.
I still don’t read like I used to but that’s more about how now I don’t trust like that 😢
“Did you know that not only is a better world possible, but it has existed willfully and beautifully hundreds of thousands of times before?”
😢
“Did you realize the extent to which it was knowingly stolen from you on purpose?”
🤬
i teach english and design at a few schools in italy, and it drives me insane how heavily they lean on standardized testing. specifically the cambridge curriculum for english learning, which feels absolutely awful for learning a language. the focus on tests and certificates as a gauge of "language proficiency" is miserable, and seems to drain the willpower from learning a foreign language. i've been far more successful in learning italian than every other time i tried learning a foreign language in US schools, specifically because my personal approach has been completely different from how schools taught me. but trying to impart that to students while also staying within standardized testing parameters often feels like a square-peg-round-hole approach, and it's really demoralizing. there's a little more flexibility in teaching design & technology, but even that tends to be fairly restrictive. still, even when i *do* try doing things differently, it's very difficult for the students to really grasp it, when their other teachers follow the banking approach & punish students for making mistakes
If school was actually to help us, we wouldn’t ignore nearly everything about child psychology, disability, learning differences and disabilities, and neurodivergence at nearly every turn to save money.
And if it worked, kids wouldn’t be coming self-ending to get out of the pressure, stress, PTSD, etc.
I say this as a disabled person with school-related-PTSD from years of ableism and lots of direct harm medically, caused by the school.
The Dutch kids are the happiest kids in the world according to UNICEF. Part of that happiness is in the school system, where kids are taking seriously. And their opinions are valued. Just like they are at home. Dutch kids in elementary school call their teachers by their Christian name. The authority of the teacher is based on his knowledge, not on his position.
I’m a retired high school teacher. Students are debating and having discussions with their teachers a lot. My best argument always was: “because I say so.” They were perplexed, they were so unfamiliar with that concept. 😀
Another beautiful expansive and expanding video essay. Much appreciation and sharing it all around.
teacher here. thank you.
I always come out of these videos from Andrew asking myself " how can I apply this in my classroom?" and even though it makes me excited to imagine all the possible changes, the reality of having to deal with the current school system at the same time and sometimes even when they act as a deterrent is scary, frustrating and paralyzing. This is coming from a US educator who learned in Brazil, where we love Paulo Freire in Education, he's our saint and our school system still isn't even close to resembling his ideals or many other incredible Brazilian educators.
It's like punching a wall expecting it to say "uncle uncle I give up"... but walls don't talk.
It's a long and arduous fight but I'll keep fighting.
If anyone here is a teacher or just someone who would like to promote a knowledge sharing event in South Florida let's exchange some contacts and ideas!
Enjoying these videos. Thought provoking
38 seconds ago wow. Luv u Andrew
PS fuck the capitalist school system
12 mins beat that
As educators, this is nothing new to hear but always refreshing it is to see someone try and implement this. The french military academic model of Disciplines and lectures is quite _pasè_ and we now aim for continuous and lifelong learning models.
Social learning, constructivism and decolonizing education models are always welcome for You all to try and set up. Watch out tho, for the empire strikes back
Many thanks for your great summary - I read Ivan Illich much earlier in life, but I'll re-watch this video to pick up about some of the other people you talk about.
My experience of schools is in the UK; a great hindrance to reform is that probably 99% of people who decide to be teachers actually enjoyed school as they experienced it, and have very little empathy with the quite large number of people who find it difficult. From talking to people who go through 'teacher-training', I know that some issues are being tackled, such as that different people learn in different ways, but I still meet dreadful teachers who declaim at social gatherings that 'all children need to be pushed'.
One thing I learned at my school was not what the establishment intended - how people behave in a mob. While the teacher-warders were having their break, all sorts of nasty behaviours were going on!
Look forward to your next video
Best bit of learning at school I had was doing a BTEC in engineering. It was very much not what you get in regular education from 5-16 yrs in the UK.
thank you so much for this video. ive hates the education system since i was in elementary which also shaped my view on US education as a whole which is part of why university never interested me. the path to get to where i am has been awry, but at the end of the day i’m glad i chose this path because it led me to this video and other likeminded ppl
The fact that the first (what we know as a "public school") in America could only happen when the literal military had to get involved by going door to door and threatening the families to have their children attend should say it all.
You don't necessariliy need school for children to learn to read and write. My mom taught me, as well as basic math, and I knew how to read by the time I started kindergarten. My teachers always said I read above my grade level. My mom didn't even finish high school. I don't think it's that hard but a lot of parents say they don't have the patience/time. In today's busy world, I could understand that. My mom was a SAHM. But in a more free society, where parents don't have to sacrifice their time for work, they would have more time to teach their kids the things that matter.
Appreciate the effort here
As a teacher myself, I am very aware of the failings and injustices of the current education system. I do try to involve students in their education, through groupwork, projects and creative tasks, but I'm aware that I'm still too much of an oldthinker and old-style pedagogue. I am very interested by these more radical models of education, although I doubt I'd be able to change the system too radically from within. Unfortunately my current students are only 11 years old and would be bored by a video as long as this that doesn't include violence, explosions, people falling down or silly singing heads popping out of toilets otherwise I'd show them the video and invite comments! I can see the well-meaning changes going horribly wrong, if there was no oversight, however. Deschooling could start to look like the Radical Unschooling movement. Greater autonomy could lead to narrow, potentially abusive homeschooling (yes, I know there are great homeschoolers, but the bad ones can be very bad!) Networks of likeminded learners could start to look like online algorithms, bringing anarchists and freethinkers together with other anarchists and freethinkers and fascists and racists with other fascists and racists. There are too many people trapped in tiny online bubbles or extremist pipelines already!
Another amazing video.
Thank you for your work!🖤🏴🖤
I’ve always felt out of place in the school system (blame my neurospicy brain lol) I hated the idea of earning some arbitrary thing of success that legitimized whatever I was learning. It felt out of reach and I couldn’t feel like I had the ability to explore unless it was on the internet. The people around me built up university like it was more free and you had unlimited choice but when I got there it was even more restrictive than Highschool. Why can’t we explore topics or classes outside of a degree program? Why isn’t there an option for those who don’t wish to earn a degree to just explore courses at their leasure? It’s maddening!
As a former social worker this video is simply enlightening. Thank You!
Sheeeeeeeeesh, what an absolute banger. Gods, you are just bonkers eloquent. I love your shit, keep it up!
Love this. Another important element of the postcapitalist metasolutions. Rising property taxes - which are used as rationale for increased property prices and ever-rising "cost of living" - justify themselves as needed to pay for more public education. Our third space free makerspace café project integrates decentralized "open learning" - similar to the free school model and 42 in San Francisco and Paris, with no formal teachers and livestream options for everything. That's fascinating that you were home schooled. I think AI and AR can play a really helpful role too. See: the Primer in Neal Stephenson's nanotech epic The Diamond Age.
As a former teacher I agree I fled
thanks for the vid! i would love to hear thoughts on what we can do as people who are employed full time seeking to give our kids creativity and initiative, a lot of these ideas seem like a great roadmap for longterm social change but leave me unsure what i would do if i had a kid today, but then i just worked a shift so maybe my comprehension is just low rn. anyway thanks, keep it up please!
That's the tough part unfortunately and I wish I had a satisfying answer. I have seen some people somehow make it work incorporating aspects of deschooling-style homeschooling while working full time, but in reality I think a lot of social change is going to be dependent on us first reclaiming our time. We hardly have the time and energy to do anything when work takes up so much of our precious waking hours. As you said, you just came off a shift, and I know that feeling of being mentally drained. That fight for our time, likely through a combination of union efforts and building viable alternative economies that can support people, is gonna be necessary to give people that first leg up of independence that can serve as a catalyst for more robust action as described here. Each person's ability to engage in such activities is gonna be deeply personal and circumstantial, but I hope the ideas I've suggested can serve as some inspiration to get the brainstorm going!
amazing video c: ..also, to think that even just more freedom of movement could change the atmosphere of classrooms so much, it would be so easy too :c ..always pitch ideas for a better living environment to your local councils!
Good video
Not sure if it was only me, but base volume felt very low on this video
When on max on a phone it was still very low
On my tv I had to increase it to like 50 (usually vids are around 16-24)
Keep up the good work
Teachers hate standardized testing, and some universities now don’t require SAT’s for certain majors. It just furthers judgment of them by administrators…which puts their job in jeopardy.
And sending people to jail for not going is crazy.
Thank you
Wow! This is so in line with my thinking on education. We need radical change in the US. ❤
Birth, School, Work, Death!!
- The Godfathers
This is an articulate way to define my experience and as a parent of 4. Got my MS fro. Bank Street College in NYC in 1991.
Homwork alone takes up all evening family time, reducing loving relationships in a family.
Have you called President Biden? He has nothing to lose and might be open to learning and making radical changes before he dies.
14:30 this painting is simply divine, i cant described how powerful how much meaningful it is.
I recently discovered Rob Gonsalves, he has many like it!
The only thing I learned from school is that I am worth nothing.
The nuclear family has much of the same problems for both parents and children. As a dad I feel compelled to be essentially a prison guard in some ways and slave in other ways. I have to police my child’s movement like a guard, but also asymmetrically labor for him every single day like a slave. Despite any resentments I may harbor about those things, I’m somehow supposed to offer him endless compassion and never feel an ounce of schadenfreude towards him. It truly feels like a zero sum game between our respective humanities.
We need to stop and think about a lot of things as humanity.
Glad to see that prussian education model mentioned. Crucial for critiqing education today
Starting at the bottom at lower education, made me believe I was stupid. Once I worked my way to the top and got entrance to university I realised to great disappointment that neither the school system, nor it's class education systems, had anything to do with how smart it's student were.
I've roamed around and found my masters, and they taught me more about life and labour than the school system ever could.
At my primary school they had a Montessori, a school system which I think is good and fits within this ideology, I would love to see someone talk about this!
I think this might be my favourite CZcams channel
As the child of teachers, I want to emphasize that many teachers feel oppressed by their lack of choice in how they teach/foster learning and their lack of sufficient educational materials due to low funding (for example having to "teach to the test" with terrible textbooks). It would behoove us to remember that the state is responsible for the majority of our poor learning environments and outcomes, not teachers.
Yes!!!
I'm in contact with many teachers, and there are many in my audience. I agree
Yessss I feel particularly excited about the possibilities of the virtual (even if sadly it has been rapidly taken over by gargantuan corporatism) spaces and digital interfaces to breach our physical limitations of connections. Online games with the correct level of player participation and ownership could foster empathy and collaboration across the world like very few other pieces of culture can! Open source is also such a blatantly simple way of accepting that knowledge is a common effort. We all build on top each other's work. The war for intellectual property is to education what Monsanto is to farming.
Are we perhaps always collaborating, just don't have the ability to measure how much of our "individual" output is build on top of previous human effort?
*And more relevant to educational experiences: Bullying is such an obvious byproduct of hierarchical-standardized educational institutions. I managed to survive it without getting too hurt. Some old friends didn't. And some classmates were bullied BY THE TEACHERS because of their different origin/situation, effectively creating a safe-spot for more bullying to happen. D I S T U R B I N G
See also: John Taylor Gatto
I have nothing but respect for Andrew, and while I’m not an anarchist, I am very anti-authoritarian, and I do believe that my coworkers could ease up in that regard for sure. But I’m still not sold that most people who critique education know what classrooms in 2024 actually look like.
So many critiques such as this one offer vague and nebulous solutions to the problem, and when they do give examples, they’re not revolutionary at all. A student wrote a paper about the ethics of capital punishment? Sure, I’ve let my G9s choose that topic, although I usually push my older students to find something more original if I know they’re capable. They didn’t just read Shakespeare, but they acted it out… very normal. Move away from lectures and make classrooms more interactive and learning more social? That is undoubtedly the standard.
And most schools have integrated choice to some extent, but it’s never truly clear what is meant here-if my 6th grade nephew decides he doesn’t like math, English, science, or history, doesn’t that mean he never has to learn those subjects? What does choice in the classroom look like to you that’s different from the choice in the classroom now? And if there is no longer “a classroom” at all, like I think you may believe, most people would like to hear something more concrete to be convinced.
Nothing but love, and if my tone came off too aggressive, I apologize for failing as a writer lol. ❤
I think we may be speaking from different experiences. Perhaps in your case classrooms operate the way I described a future reimagining of education might (although I wasn't proposing nine year old ethics essays and drama classes as *the* solution), but in much of the world, little about the standard schooling model has fundamentally changed. A few tweaks here and there, maybe a computer class, but the homework, the school day's structure, the classroom design, the grading system etc, hasn't changed very much.
I don't recall saying there is no longer a classrom at all' I emphasised the opposite. That classrooms would still exist, with theoretical instruction and associations of skilled educators, but run horizontally rather than hierarchically. I introduced this reimagining of the classroom alongside several other components outside of the classroom (such as directories and peer matching) to provide the materials to construct education alternatives according to the needs of each specific circumstance. This is not one single proposal, but the scaffolding for many to be built.
@@Andrewism , thank you for replying! I do promise you that school is a lot different than it was when I was a child. I’ve worked at only two US public schools and 2 international, but for almost every job interview I’ve had, the admin almost always ask how I make the classroom a creative, interactive environment, how I differentiate instruction, how I incorporate social learning, etc. I’m also not saying that things can’t improve! I wish students weren’t required to spend so many hours in the classroom, for instance. And I dislike the grading system as well. Many teachers, such as myself, only grade summative assessments and allow for retakes/redos/revisions afterwards. But I can’t say that’s the standard. I also wish we could incorporate more relevant classes than just the computer class, and IB and AP programs do limit instruction somewhat.
I am also only a HS teacher, so I can’t say I know what school looks like in younger grades. My comment about the video talking about the student writing a paper on the ethics of capital punishment was concerning HS, G9 meaning grade 9.
And okay. Maybe there were just some lines in the video that made me think there was no longer a classroom at all because I didn’t understand them or didn’t understand how they would operate within a classroom.
I guess I am an outlier in that I really enjoyed the academic side of school, it was the social side of relating to other students that was hard for me.
However I was always an avid reader and loved the freedom of spending hours in the library just perusing every topic under the sun, so I get that the school system is inherently limited.
While I don't like the trend I see of getting rid of objective metrics in education as it doesn't make differences go away it just hides them, I do see that for most students the importance of getting good grades is mostly from social pressure and not how it impacts them in life.
So then Andrew, when are you opening your first school? :)
The founding fathers of the United States had no concept of public schools, public school was developed in the 1830s. There is room for improvement on how schools work
The oldest type of anarchism, hating your teacher. For real though, wonderful video, watching your stuff always makes me want to get involved to make a world like this possible.
It feels really difficult to articulate the problems with formal education to non anarchists. I appreciate you bringing this together.